Sherlock Holmes & The Arthur 'Speedy' Hudson Case
by Silberias
Summary: Why did Sherlock move into 221B before he even knew he had a flatmate? Because his mother asked him to.


The end is mostly for Tutaria and BossladyRiver, the rest is for me because of feels leftover from the unaired pilot, as well as feels from ASiP and ASiB (Sherlock hugs AND kisses Mrs. Hudson in ASiP, and he beats the living crap out of a guy in ASiB so yeah).

Enjoy!

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Sherlock was disappointed in John. Not _very_ disappointed, but a little. Well, if he was very honest he was disappointed in everyone around him who had attempted to lie to him his entire life. But that was another matter entirely. John lived with him. John lived with him and watched him—and more importantly, John knew Mrs. Hudson and spoke with Mrs. Hudson and saw how she doted upon Sherlock and how Sherlock doted upon her. He saw how Sherlock doted on _no one_ else. It was because of a secret, from long ago.

It was something, Mycroft had told him softly when Sherlock was twenty and shaking with fury, that he was never meant to discover. His elder brother, nearing thirty and losing hair rapidly already, sat mournfully in a chair that was far too serious for him. Sherlock paced around the room, the tremors in his hands far too great to have any strength in his fingers else he might have resorted to shaking the rest of the truth out of his brother. He'd been lied to in the worst of ways, in his opinion.

He had long ago accepted that he was adopted—no one spoke of it, but in a family where everyone had russet or blond locks, Sherlock stuck out in a physically painful way. His fluffy black curls washed out his pale skin where the rest of his family was almost ruddy in comparison. And his nose was entirely wrong as well. His mother had tried throughout his childhood to reassure him that he had his father's eyes, but Sherlock was above comforting himself with pretty lies. Besides, there was a tightness to the way she said he had his father's eyes that caused immediate distrust.

It didn't bother him too much, that he was adopted, but it did bring questions. Questions that he knew would never be answered because of his family's frigid atmosphere. Sherlock had held little hope of ever meeting either of his biological parents—it would have been a treat, though, to see if they'd had other children. To see if those siblings of his were any match to him in brain power. It would have been an absolute _treat_. He imagined how if he found them, he would have two families. One which got him places in life, and another that loved him for the fact that he looked like them. The second appealed to Sherlock far more than the first, if he was honest.

The truth, however, had alienated him from his entire family except for Mycroft—and Mummy on her birthday, but that was all any of them got. The truth was that this dotty old widowed landlady, Mrs. Hudson, was Sherlock's mother. He had first met her when he popped into the shop her son Martin ran for her. Sherlock recalled that he had been after a coffee on his way to university. At first it was Martin that had arrested him, and then his eyes had been dragged towards the woman who fretted at how the ginger teenager handled change. Martin had his same nose, mouth—his curls were the same, save the color. And then there was the woman—her hair had been dark, ink black once upon a time but it was heading on towards gray now. Her mouth had the same outrageous Cupid's bow and Sherlock had fought against touching his own lips to double-check the resemblance. It had thinned with her age, but he could see it.

That was fifteen years ago and still sometimes if Sherlock wasn't careful his blood would run to ice with rage. Mrs. Hudson had been almost exactly what he had always wanted in a mother—she was sweet, and she fretted and loved and was just _open _and _nice_. And he'd been kept from her his entire life, living in the icebox that was the Holmes family. He hadn't known how to react. He just stood and sputtered for a few seconds before turning and running. He sprinted out of the shop, tripping into people and nearly being hit in the street multiple times. Somehow he had made it to Mycroft's office—his brilliant older brother would fix this, his brilliant older brother would tell him _why_—and collapsed when the whole sad story was tugged out of tightly closed lockers.

That their father was a womanizer was no mystery, both Mycroft and Sherlock had each known this since they'd learned to talk. In fact it was Mycroft who, at age ten, had coached the then three year old Sherlock on what not to tell Mummy they'd seen Father doing if they ever saw him 'hugging' random women. That he'd left an upper-lower-class woman pregnant and alone wouldn't have been any surprise either, but then why was Sherlock living as his father's legitimate son rather than with his mother as her mistake?

"She's quite smart, I don't know if you spoke with her at all in the midst of it. She sees things the way they are, and tells people such—I used to have coffee there, at Baker Street, when I was at uni. If you want to know where that brain came from, Sherlock, it came from that poor woman at Baker Street and from Father," Mycroft's words barely penetrated the fog over Sherlock's brain, at least until after a meaningful pause his plain, boring older brother continued in a softer, very disinterested voice. The voice he used when he wanted Father to ignore him and Sherlock to pay attention.

"Mrs. Hudson…The Mrs. to Mr. Arthur 'Speedy' Hudson. She's married to the mob, Sherlock—Father stole a piece of another man's cake. Mr. Hudson was deeply upset with Father—had him kidnapped in the dead of night, told him they could do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way was that Father take you in when you arrived and nothing more would be said about it. The hard way was to choose not to take you in, and cast a blind eye towards Hudson & Family's dealings, even fund some of them. You…can of course understand which Father chose."

Fifteen years since then and now and a lot had happened.

Sherlock had immediately wanted to reach out despite being counseled against it by Mycroft and forbidden by Father. Soon he had turned to self-destruction instead. No one would be able to love him, he reasoned easily through the drugs, because the only one capable of loving him had been forced to give him up. Father's people were strategically placed everywhere near Baker Street, and, for six years of drug-addled wandering, Sherlock saw nothing of the sweet woman with the Cupid's bow mouth or her curly used-to-be-inky-black hair.

But then he had been sober enough one day to read the paper. He had awoken in Mycroft's study, curled on the couch, covered in a worn out old house coat. His brother was answering email at his desk, swanning for his coming promotion—Mycroft Holmes was, Sherlock had thought, about to become the Commonwealth. At least, he'd amended as he tried to sit up, if he was correct in his estimation of how many days he'd lost on that last bender.

"I brought you the paper, there is an interesting article that I wonder might interest you, Sherlock. And a letter, but I will give that to you once you find the article and you've had a coffee—two sugars still?" He had shivered and nodded, reaching out a shaky hand to snatch at the paper. Curling once again into a ball he tried to read the letters on the page but his eyes wouldn't focus and dammit all—it took him a few minutes before he was able to bully his brain into behaving well enough to read.

_Arthur 'Speedy' Hudson trial preparation slow going as public favor shifts—_ Sherlock had frozen, that name burning through the haze the drugs had left behind in his brain. Gripping the paper fiercely now, he had no trouble deciphering the article. It was American, he could tell that much by the spellings, in Florida because of the general age, tan, and paunch of the prosecutor who was pictured on the front page—the only place in America where those three coincided was Florida. Sherlock tore through the rest of the story, picking apart what the defense planned on using to get the man off and—wait.

Looking up from the paper, Sherlock stared across the room at his brother. The shakes were back a little, but not as bad. He wanted something to take the edge off; something to put in his body that was bad for it, but the coffee still hadn't come. Mycroft stared impassively back at him for a long moment before opening a drawer at knee level on his desk, taking out a sealed envelope. His brother didn't stand as he proffered the letter, and neither did he wave it about in the air.

So Sherlock stood, huffily drawing the dressing gown closed around himself—remembering that while he was Sherlock Holmes, he looked like a homeless ruffian underneath the used-to-be-pristine-dressing gown—and tried to walk in a straight line towards Mycroft. It would have helped to hold Mycroft's gaze, but Sherlock found he could not, it made him far too ashamed to cope with while he was this sober. Instead he focused on the awful humiliation his brother had endured to have him wake up here rather than in a jail cell. Eventually, with only two stumbles, he made it across the room and took the envelope and made out who it was addressed to.

_Mycroft Holmes_

He ticked his eyebrow up but opened the letter anyway. If Mycroft was too stupid to see that this wasn't for Sherlock then he deserved to have his letters opened. The paper inside was dated six years before.

_Mykie, it is so good of you to write back about Sherlock. When I saw him in my little shop I thought I had gone round the bend entirely! Is it strange to say that he's grown so much, but at the same time he looks so very, very young? He certainly gave Martin such a shock—_and the letter prattled on from there. Sherlock ran his fingers reverently over her writing, hovering uncertainly over the words she pronounced of him. But that was a different Sherlock Holmes entirely. That Sherlock was dead. Had died of grief.

"You kept this from me—she calls you _Mykie!"_ Sherlock barely remembered not to crush the letter that Mrs. Hudson had written to his brother. Mykie had been Mycroft's nickname when Sherlock had been small, and when his brother had turned eighteen he'd asked Sherlock to stop using it. But apparently Mrs. Hudson was allowed to call him such—

"Father kept you from her entirely, I would ask you to remember. At any rate, Father no longer has a say in any of our lives as of this morning because he's retired, and _you_ are getting on the next plane to Tampa after a change of clothes. Mrs. Hudson has informed me that should _Mr_. Hudson be cleared of his charges in Florida he will undoubtedly come for her with the intent to kill despite specific orders of her father-in-law to stand down. If you want her in your life, Sherlock, you should ensure that Speedy Hudson does not wiggle out of this one."

Ah. So that was why they were promoting his brother. Sherlock had a brief surge of pride for his country that _someone_ had decided to put Mycroft to work doing something that he was perfectly suited for—and that they'd done it soon enough for Mycroft to actually get something _done_ in his career. For the first time in a long time, Sherlock obeyed his brother's wishes and got on the plane to Tampa.

Sherlock had been on cocaine at the time, and his shakes and tremors were misery of the acutest kind on the plane ride. It was only because he weighed barely nine stone that he wasn't able to escape Mycroft's bodyguards—if he'd been stronger, not waiflike and ill, he would have been able to get away from them to find himself a dealer. Instead he ended up slung over a man's shoulder like an indignant sack of potatoes. It was the first and last time Sherlock chose to acknowledge the concept of irony and admit that he hated it.

The case had been open and shut for him—he'd been able to pick up all the details from a _newspaper_, it would have been humiliating if he'd had to spend more than a few days putting everything together. The only hiccup was that he was so physically _weak_ that his energy was quickly sapped each day—he was used to having another hit and going off of that until he passed out completely. It occurred to him, as he curled up on a couch at the state police agency, that Mycroft could easily put Mrs. Hudson into a witness protection scheme somewhere—anywhere. His brother was doing this for some reason—meddling, trying to control him.

He started smoking—the detective he was aiding was a chain-smoker who was more than willing to help Sherlock out. He was helping the man put Speedy Hudson on a fast-track to death-row, so of course the detective was willing to bend over backwards to help him out. He'd also been warned of Sherlock's current drug of choice and his previous favorites, however, and a pack of cigarettes was the most Sherlock could cajole out of the man. The nicotine was abrasive to his system at first, but by the end of his three weeks—Sherlock was an expert witness, according to the prosecution—in Florida he could go through a pack a day. It helped him think, and he could do it almost wherever and whenever he wanted.

It was still expensive, and there were lots of varying levels of quality and methods of intake—most of them vile, though—and it gave the raging bull of his cocaine addiction something to butt against. He could even buy it in public, everything very top-of-the-counter and credit-cardy. There was also the added bonus that the people selling the cigarettes weren't likely to stab him.

Once he'd flown back to London he settled on more or less a pack a day, putting a cigarette in his mouth every time he thought of going after that pleasurable rush—and lighting said cigarette if he was still thinking of a hit after ten minutes. After the verdict came out for Mr. Hudson a few months later—guilty in the most inescapable degree, no appeal to be granted—Mycroft had sent a car to the dirty, anonymous flat he'd put Sherlock in. Inside it was a fairly nice change of clothes—a crimson silk shirt, a black under shirt, pressed black trousers, good shoes. _He was meeting Mrs. Hudson today._

Sherlock was gripped with a sudden feeling of complete inadequacy. This woman had given him _life_, and what would she see today? His uncombed hair, his gaunt features, his alarming thinness. She would see him as an ungrateful wretch. Right around then is when he realized that the doors of the car were locked—and controlled from the driver's compartment. Swinging suddenly from fear to rage, Sherlock had tried to get out—hail the attention of other drivers or passengers in the cars around him, but the windows were tinted far too dark. The cheap phone in his pocket went off then.

_Change your clothes in the next six minutes and I will tell Anders that he need not carry you. When you get there, order something to eat for God's sake and EAT IT. She has been worrying constantly since I told her the details of her husband's trial. _

_M_

He'd eyed the crimson shirt with the intent for it to burst into flame, but after three minutes was unsuccessful. So he changed, even putting on the damned shoes—although he did not change his socks to the ones provided, he preferred his own. When the car rolled to a stop and the doors unlocked Sherlock sat inside for a long moment, just staring out. The woman who was his mother was sitting there, in the middle of the out-door café. Her hair was still curly, but even lighter now than it had been when he'd last laid eyes on her. It looked as though a slight blond treatment had been done to her graying locks.

There was something serene and soothing about her as she fidgeted with her purse and her napkin and her silverware and her glass of water. It was this sense that she was _waiting_ for him, that she _wanted_ him in a way he'd rarely felt _wanted_ throughout his life, that gave Sherlock the impetus to get out of the car. He combed his fingers once through his hair—hair that people wouldn't gawk at him for if he was sitting next to that woman—and opened the door.

Sherlock badly wanted a cigarette as he walked up to the empty seat across from Mrs. Hudson—what was her first name? Did she even have one? Would Mycroft tell him or would she tell him?—and sat down. She had stopped breathing the instant she'd seen him, and still held her breath as he settled into the seat and folded the sleeves of his shirt away from his wrists. Just as he felt the blood rising up the pale skin of his neck, she let that breath out. A tiny smile crept onto her face.

"Sherlock," she said softly, finally, reaching across the table to touch one of his hands. He turned it over, palm up, to let her inspect his fingers.

He smiled hesitantly at her, enjoying the way she said his name.

"Mykie told me that you are getting better—are you?"

"I…"he felt the blood creep to the surface of his skin again, embarrassed at his personal failures, ashamed of his addictions. He hated how shame felt on his shoulders, it weighed him down in a way which was antithesis to how he wanted to live his life.

"Because when you're better, Sherlock, I want you to come live with me—at Baker Street. Mykie has it all arranged for you to go to the country, I think he said, but I want it to be this way. I…I just want to see you, and get to know you," she said softly, her ivory skin mirroring his in pinkness. Her cool fingers touched his fingertips. He'd given her his left hand because it was the more interesting hand by far in his opinion.

"Do you…do you still play violin?"

"Not in a long time," he said softly, eyes drinking in her every movement. Six years ago he had only barely seen her, registered her, understood her to be his mother—that interaction had been probably all of eleven seconds. That she had recognized him too was amazing, and had his chest constricting in a weirdly pleasant way.

"When you're better, I'd like to hear you play."

Sherlock swallowed hard, feeling his heart racing and his fingers almost twitching in excitement. This was better than any rush he'd ever felt from anything he'd laid his hands on in the last six years. This was far more exhilarating.

"Yes…yes. What about…"

"Martin? He works for Mykie now, I suggested it—it's why Arthur wanted…well, you know."

"Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock put his other hand on the table to sandwich hers, holding her hands firmly, "if anyone dares lay a finger on you, I will personally throw them out of a window. Repeatedly if necessary. I…I will try to do better…_get_ better." She smiled widely at that.

"Sherlock, you don't need to do better for me. I will love you in any way you'll let me. I want to someday see that young man again who wandered into my shop looking for a coffee, if you can manage that. But I will take you as you come, too. I've seen far worse and you know it, young man."

"Even if I make a habit of being a detective, like Mycroft had me do? I admit, there was something of a rush doing that…" He kept his voice soft and his eyes averted, embarrassed that playing at being a sleuth had given him pleasure he hadn't known since his last hit of coke four months ago. Besides, it was strange for someone other than Mycroft to be genuinely interested in what _Sherlock_ wanted or liked.

"Especially then, if it makes you happy. But you ought not be alone when you come, I imagine you'll still be yourself then too—need someone to look after you. Heaven knows I'll never figure out how, Sherlock," she said with another soft smile, petting the back of one of his hands with her free one. She would have been such a better mother than his own had been…He adored Mummy, of course, but she had sometimes been strained in her affections to him. Mrs. Hudson was so warm and sweet, Sherlock was half-tempted to curl up on the ground next to her chair and hug her 'round the knees, fall asleep that way too. Mrs. Hudson might cluck at him, he knew, but she ultimately won't mind. She could withstand a lot, it seemed.

She probably wouldn't even mind that he was gay.

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